Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!bcase
From: bcase@cup.portal.com (Brian bcase Case)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: register save/restore
Message-ID: <10723@cup.portal.com>
Date: 31 Oct 88 21:58:39 GMT
References: <3300037@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <1988Oct30.013510.16861@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 10

>The VAX all-singing CALLS/CALLG was also VERY  slow;  but  the  only  way  to
>find  this  out was to time it by (e.g.) the Unix "time" command -- DEC never
>published any Vax timing-notes (that I know of).

Yes, this never ceased to amaze me.  How in the world would you write
a good compiler for this machine?; it seems impossible to make good
code selection decisions without knowing how long things take.  I
guess they thought the only consideration was code size; at leas the
archtitecture manual *had* to tell you the instruction encodings!  :-)
Oh, yeah, I forgot:  smaller code is faster code.  Sigh.